RESTLESS ISSUE 1 - Interview with Necros / FM
Conducted by: jmX Via: EMAIL
jmX: Hello Andy, thanks for agreeing to be inteviewed. Im sure a
lot of people have been wondering what you have been up to
recently. I have noticed your absense from trax. What have
you been up to?
NEC: well ive actually taken a job at Origin Systems, i graduated
from the state university of new york and i figured well it was time
to get off of poverty and start working for a living :
jmX: How has your job at Origin been working out?
NEC: Its been cool.
jmX: Do you primarily code or write music, and for which project?or
can you say?
NEC: Right now we are working on a new crusader-ish project, im
helping out
with both programming and eventually the audio. Primarily i code 3d
stuff, but were using some neat lighting systems and some cool
particle stuff too,
so its going to be pretty neat.
jmX: What OS are you programming for? And as far as coding at Origin
goes, is the style much different from standard demo code, ie..stuff
you
would find up on hornet.org?
NEC: well actually its pretty strange we are using Visual C++ 5.0
for code, along with Visual Sourcesafe for version control...
everything is win95 DirectX stuff, its both a help and a hindrance...
a lot of the low level blitter and rasterizer stuff is all in assembly
though... so that stuff is exactly the same as demo coding... a lot of
people around here are fairly familiar with the demo scene in fact..
jmX: How did you get the job at Origin and what tips do you have for
other
sceners looking for a job in the computer game industry?
NEC: i got this job through a this guy VladD on trax giving me an
email contact here, and that led to my doing contract work for the
first two crusader games and then they liked me so much they decided
they wanted me full time : and i had nothing better to do ...as
far as sceners looking for a job, well that depends on your
specialty... if you are a reasonably good 3-d programmer, there are
TONS of jobs out there, just start mailing out applications, they love
people who know how to write a half-decent 3d system... however if you
are a music scene person, there is unfortunately very little work in
the game industry very few companies if any use any tracked formats,
and unless you do really good redbook/cd-audio work, the pickings are
slim..
jmX: Out of curiosity, can you say anything about the sound system
Origin is
using for their newest projects? Is it tracked? Midi? CD AUDIO?
NEC: well, i dont know for sure, but at least from the crusader
perspective, it maybe be
cd audio, since GM sucks, and with DVD coming
out, the space constraints are getting less and less limited this
doesnt mean that .IT/.XM is useless, but its still a hobbyist thing
as far as the game companies see it
jmX: Ok, enough about Origin, now lets talk about you and the scene.
NEC: umm ok :
****** BEGIN PART 3 **********
jmX: If I spit out the word Demoscene, what pops into your mind?
NEC: bunch of finnish guys who figured out what a rotation matrix is
jmX: How do you feel about the scene? How much longer do you plan to
stay
in it, and how active do you feel you will be during that time?
NEC: i think the scene is/was great however we have to be honest
here, there is very
little the scene can provide back to you except for personal
rewards... eventually you have to get into the real world and start
making some money otherwise creditors will start chasing your ass down
: it seems to me that game coding, at least on the graphics side,
most closely mirrors the scene coding aspects
jmX: Do you have another major release planned? musicdisk,demo,etc
NEC: one more musicdisk, i know ive been saying that for a year now,
but i will finish it hopefully soon :
jmX: How do you feel about what some call the tracking explosion in
the
scene, primarily the NA scene?
NEC: i think its great but to me seems a bit too much IRC-driven
... and people dont seem to want to try to live up
to the standards of the european stuff in some cases because they
havent even heard euro stuff!
jmX: How do you feel about the NA scene? What do you think is wrong,
and
what do you think needs to happen for the quality of productions to
improve?
NEC: well there are a lot of good NA trackers out there, but
unfortunately the bad ones are the ones that release the most hmm
could there be a correlation between time put in to song and quality
of song? nah ... the problem with music is that everyone thinks
they can do it but its actually far more subtle and complicated than
one might think
***** END INTERVIEW PART 3 ******
Conducted by: jmX Via: EMAIL
jmX: Hello Andy, thanks for agreeing to be inteviewed. Im sure a
lot of people have been wondering what you have been up to
recently. I have noticed your absense from trax. What have
you been up to?
NEC: well ive actually taken a job at Origin Systems, i graduated
from the state university of new york and i figured well it was time
to get off of poverty and start working for a living :
jmX: How has your job at Origin been working out?
NEC: Its been cool.
jmX: Do you primarily code or write music, and for which project?or
can you say?
NEC: Right now we are working on a new crusader-ish project, im
helping out
with both programming and eventually the audio. Primarily i code 3d
stuff, but were using some neat lighting systems and some cool
particle stuff too,
so its going to be pretty neat.
jmX: What OS are you programming for? And as far as coding at Origin
goes, is the style much different from standard demo code, ie..stuff
you
would find up on hornet.org?
NEC: well actually its pretty strange we are using Visual C++ 5.0
for code, along with Visual Sourcesafe for version control...
everything is win95 DirectX stuff, its both a help and a hindrance...
a lot of the low level blitter and rasterizer stuff is all in assembly
though... so that stuff is exactly the same as demo coding... a lot of
people around here are fairly familiar with the demo scene in fact..
jmX: How did you get the job at Origin and what tips do you have for
other
sceners looking for a job in the computer game industry?
NEC: i got this job through a this guy VladD on trax giving me an
email contact here, and that led to my doing contract work for the
first two crusader games and then they liked me so much they decided
they wanted me full time : and i had nothing better to do ...as
far as sceners looking for a job, well that depends on your
specialty... if you are a reasonably good 3-d programmer, there are
TONS of jobs out there, just start mailing out applications, they love
people who know how to write a half-decent 3d system... however if you
are a music scene person, there is unfortunately very little work in
the game industry very few companies if any use any tracked formats,
and unless you do really good redbook/cd-audio work, the pickings are
slim..
jmX: Out of curiosity, can you say anything about the sound system
Origin is
using for their newest projects? Is it tracked? Midi? CD AUDIO?
NEC: well, i dont know for sure, but at least from the crusader
perspective, it maybe be
cd audio, since GM sucks, and with DVD coming
out, the space constraints are getting less and less limited this
doesnt mean that .IT/.XM is useless, but its still a hobbyist thing
as far as the game companies see it
jmX: Ok, enough about Origin, now lets talk about you and the scene.
NEC: umm ok :
****** BEGIN PART 3 **********
jmX: If I spit out the word Demoscene, what pops into your mind?
NEC: bunch of finnish guys who figured out what a rotation matrix is
jmX: How do you feel about the scene? How much longer do you plan to
stay
in it, and how active do you feel you will be during that time?
NEC: i think the scene is/was great however we have to be honest
here, there is very
little the scene can provide back to you except for personal
rewards... eventually you have to get into the real world and start
making some money otherwise creditors will start chasing your ass down
: it seems to me that game coding, at least on the graphics side,
most closely mirrors the scene coding aspects
jmX: Do you have another major release planned? musicdisk,demo,etc
NEC: one more musicdisk, i know ive been saying that for a year now,
but i will finish it hopefully soon :
jmX: How do you feel about what some call the tracking explosion in
the
scene, primarily the NA scene?
NEC: i think its great but to me seems a bit too much IRC-driven
... and people dont seem to want to try to live up
to the standards of the european stuff in some cases because they
havent even heard euro stuff!
jmX: How do you feel about the NA scene? What do you think is wrong,
and
what do you think needs to happen for the quality of productions to
improve?
NEC: well there are a lot of good NA trackers out there, but
unfortunately the bad ones are the ones that release the most hmm
could there be a correlation between time put in to song and quality
of song? nah ... the problem with music is that everyone thinks
they can do it but its actually far more subtle and complicated than
one might think
***** END INTERVIEW PART 3 ******
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